Fifty Years and a Few More
by Araceil
Summary: Slash. Thorin/Harry. Dwarf!Harry. Drabble/One-shot series. After returning the Crown Jewel to the Dwarf King, Harry receives a silver hair clip so that the Ancient King who held the glowing jewel most precious could express his thanks upon his death. Years later, Harry awakens stark bollock naked in a field with a beard down to his arsehole and no clue where he is.
1. Star

**Title:**** Fifty Years and a Few More**

**Category:**** Crossover, pre!Hobbit/post!Harry Potter  
><strong>**Subcategory:**** Oneshot/Drabble series**

**Prompt:**** Star****  
><span>Summary:<span>**** Harry finds a shiny rock filled with starlight and decides to be a good guy. The Ministry aren't impressed but the Dwarves like him now, so things could be worse.****  
><span>Warnings:<span>**** Things and stuff and whut?**

_I don't own the Hobbit, nor do I own Harry Potter. I'm just playing in the sandbox and making a big old mess._

_**000**_

It was just a routine raid on the Midnight Black Market. Anything from illegally enchanted ferrets to muggleborn children being sold in and out of the country as slaves, sex toys, or potion ingredients, could be found in the Midnight Market.

So when Harry found what was unmistakably the missing Dwarven Crown Jewel, he wasn't surprised so much as annoyed.

Because his Superior Officer would have his nutsack for a hat if he didn't turn it over to the Wizengmot immediately so they could force through those highly suspect trade agreements they had been haggling with for the last four hundred years. Dwarves were nothing if not stubborn, and they still refused to meet the terms. But if they threw this glowing rock into the mix, well, it could go one of two ways: The Dwarves would crumble and the Wizengmot would get the terms they liked, which put the Dwarves in a bad position. Or, the Dwarves would get pissed off to the point where they declared war upon Wizards, and that wouldn't end well for anyone.

Harry stuffed the stone into his back pocket, and once the raid was done booked a week off on holiday.

His boss was in such a good mood he even approved it.

_**000**_

Taking Teddy to see the last great Dwarf Kingdom was his excuse for visiting. He knew Dwarves looked well on children, regardless of their species (it was the only way Lockheart managed to hire a few of the down on their luck bar-crawlers from Knockturn Alley), and Harry wanted his godson to be tolerant of all peoples. The three year old did love the old muggle tales about supernatural beings. He was quite disappointed when Kreacher wasn't like the elves in his books, though he did try to get the old elf into archery, but he for all that he did so when ordered, he did it with such ill-grace that Teddy stopped asking within a week and bugged Harry about it instead. Dwarves, Harry imagined, would sooth that disappointment. They were _very_ much like the tales.

The Mountain itself was unplottable, hidden from Muggles in northern Europe, it was quite a cold place, so he felt absolutely no remorse in bundling the both of them up in heavy cloaks – which weren't good enough he learned as soon as he _got_ there. A quick hunt through the magic quarter, and Harry settled for a Russian coat lined with fur, it was quite nice. But Teddy, curse his sharp eyesight, had spotted a Dwarvish made coat that matched one of the pictures in his favourite story books, possessing shoulders that were probably a foot wider on both sides than he was around the middle, and promptly fallen in love with it. Harry hadn't the heart to turn him down so he ended up shelling out a fair bit of gold for his godson who huddled into the massive fluffy thing gleefully, sleeves extending down over his little hands as he tottered ahead of him into the great stone city.

And then tripped on the hem and fell face first down on the ground with a oomph.

Harry could have done without the water-works, but none of the onlookers could deny the incident wasn't adorable in its own way if the coos from the Dwarrowdams, and the amused chortles of the Dwarf men was any indication as Harry carefully scooped his wailing three year old catastrophe up into his arms. Just as clumsy as his mother, this one.

They booked into one of the Inns on the mid-levels, not far from the market and spent the first few days exploring happily. Harry sitting them both down whenever one of the elderly Dwarves appeared to tell stories to the younger at the back of the market place next to the baker's stall. They became pretty well known to the parents amongst the mountain who seemed thoroughly approving of Harry's determination to introduce Teddy to as many different cultures as possible. Teddy made several friends while Harry very delicately made inquiries further and further up the mountain onto who was in charge, or at least willing to an informal meeting.

By the end of his week with the Dwarves, he finally got the meeting he wanted.

The Dwarf he spoke to, a cheerful, if tired looking Dwarrow with a thick red beard turning grey here and there who called himself Gandin, apparently his family line had called this Mountain home since time beyond memory and History known to wizard kind.

Making sure Teddy was happily distracted in the corner with a few animated toys, Harry threw up a privacy ward and set the shiny rock onto the table.

"Knowing what I do about my Ministry, I figured it was best to return this discreetly. It was seized by my team during a raid on the Midnight Black Market in Bavaria," he explained as the old Dwarf gaped and reached out with trembling fingers to the stone.

"This... is the – it has been stolen, for centuries, from my very ancestor's tomb where he sleeps even now," he breathed as he gently took the stone up as if it were made of the most delicate spun sugar.

Harry shrugged a shoulder, "Now you can put it back. I don't really want relations between our people's to sour over, well, clearly it's important to you but, its value is lost on me I'm afraid," he admitted with a sheepish shrug of his shoulders. A glowing rock was still a rock. The most valuable thing in his life was currently chewing on – something. "Teddy, stop – excuse me," he begged the Dwarf as he quickly rushed to the toddler and wrestled the odd object out of his mouth. He sighed upon realising it was his housekey, the hell had the cheeky little monster gotten hold of that? Smelling a tantrum from the little boy as he glared wetly up at his godfather for taking it away, Harry animated one of the little horse dolls and thoroughly distracted the little boy before returning to the table. "Sorry about that," he muttered, "Kids, they'll put anything in their mouths," he complained tossing his keys on the table with a sour expression.

The meeting ended with Gandin still not entirely sure what to make of Harry and almost weeping with a mix of frustration, confusion, and awe when the wizard awkwardly denied any reward. Repeatedly.

"You have no idea what this is, do you?" Gandin demanded helplessly, almost angrily, as he waved the rock around.

"One of your most precious crown jewels," Harry answered with a shrug as he picked up a grouchy Teddy who was getting tired and wriggly. "Look, I didn't return it for a reward. I just didn't want things between our peoples to get worse, which it would've if I'd handed it in like I should have. So, just keep it quiet, yeah? I could lose my job for this." He grimaced, he could actually be thrown into Azkaban for it these days. He had written those laws up himself and not really considered how the corrupt higher-ups would take to trying to abuse them.

The next morning, as he was packing their bags, a knock was heard upon his bedrooms door. Outside was Gandin.

"My brother wants to see you," he said by means of explanation.

And it wasn't long before Harry was stood in front of a _very_ important looking Dwarf in thick, rich black furs, and gold jewellery, staring up at him with icy blue eyes under thickly braided chalk white and iron grey hair. Harry felt distinctly uncomfortable and underdressed in a pair of grotty grey jeans and one of his Weasley Christmas sweaters – complete with holes in the elbows because he wore them more than he technically should have. Teddy, hanging off his hand and pointing at the Dwarf, babbling away in a mix of English and toddler, caused smiles to crack on a few whiskered faces and managed to diffuse the tension as the Dwarf _King_, Harry managed to identify, waved away his guards.

"I don't know how I can thank you, Harry Potter, for the return of the Arkenstone," the King rumbled as a babbling Teddy stubbornly tugged his godfather over, the King smiling warmly at the little boy who latched his tiny pudgy hands onto the fine fur of his coat, making his adoptive father wince.

"Well, 'thank you' would be good enough, your Majesty," he admitted awkwardly as the King abruptly sat down, cross legged, and allowed Teddy to practically clamber over him. "Teddy, no! We don't pull hair!" he scolded immediately, spotting a pair of tiny hands reach for the King's braids. Teddy had nearly scalped Hermione in his fascination with her curly brown hair several months ago.

The King chuckled heartily, "He is fine. It will take more than these tiny fingers to tear the hair from my head," he assured the young father as he caught the lad's hands, tiny hands not quite large enough to wrap around his thick fingers. Feeling awkward still on his feet, Harry tentatively sat on the floor opposite as Teddy really _did_ climb on top of the remarkably tolerant Dwarrow who grinned in amusement at the wince Harry gave when Teddy actually did use his hair to pull himself up. "Since you refuse all rewards and honours, requesting only that we keep your part in our most sacred treasure's return silent, there is little I can do. Save perhaps to give you this," he intoned as he reached into a pocket and withdrew a small silver hairclip. It was tarnished a little at the edges, and shaped like a bead.

He reached out and took Harry's unresisting right hand, setting the clip in his palm and curling his fingers over it with a few murmured words in his native tongue.

"This... is the bead of an Ancient King, his name lost to time. A King who held the Jewel most precious above all others. Since you will accept no reward from us, then perhaps, upon death, you will accept his thanks for this service. It will allow you to access Mahal's Halls, the ones he set aside for the Dwarves upon their deaths, should you so wish," the King explained as he withdrew from the young wizard who eyed the hair clip carefully.

"If it is so precious then shouldn't it remain - "

The Dwarf held a hand up to silence him, not even noticing Teddy tumbling from his shoulder to straddle his elbow with a giggle. He smiled at the young wizard, blue eyes crinkling, "You have returned that which is _most_ precious to my people. This is the best we can do to return that which you have given us without expectation, or desire, for reward. Go, and take with you our thanks, and friendship from now until you return to the Song of Beginnings."

With nothing else to do, Harry thanked the King with no small amount of bewilderment.

He tried to leave then, but Teddy decided he very much liked the Dwarf King and hid himself under the Dwarrow's coat, said Dwarf laughing uproariously but doing absolutely nothing to help Harry get his godson out from under there. In the end, Harry remained in the Dwarf King's chambers for the rest of the day and struck an unexpected friendship with him, learning that his name was Radin, and then befriending his younger brother Gandin. Both of whom were apparently named for the very first wizards to ever walk the earth.

Harry _did_ lose his job. One of his colleagues caught him pocketing the stone, and when the Ministry found out his boss hit the roof. There were a few calls for arrest and imprisonment in Azkaban, mostly from the Purebloods who sought to gain the most benefit from the disputed trade agreements, but the second the public found out just what their Boy Who Lived was being accused of that was that. The Ministry had to actually close down when a few came in and started a riot. Harry eventually had to beg Radin to hide him from them, at least until the chaos died down and he could actually leave without having spells flying this way and that over his head (possibly hitting Teddy in the process, which was unacceptable). He ended up having to hide significantly longer than anyone expected when the call to return to a monarchy was raised and _his_ name, as the last Peverell, was suddenly being demanded to take the Ancient Throne – Throne of what Harry had no idea, he didn't even know Wizards _had_ a monarchy! Harry stayed hiding within the Dwarf Kingdom until it was time for Teddy to go to school at eleven, and though they talked about it for a long time, eventually anywhere in England was vetoed. He went to Durmstrang instead, by his own choice. After all, with Viktor Krum's interest in his Alma Mater, their reputation for the Dark Arts died down, and now it was a very respectable learning establishment – with a strong Quidditch Presence as good seventh year players who showed the determination to go pro, often got recruited straight out of their final year for training camps.

Years down the line, he would laugh himself sick when Teddy, at twenty five, proposed to a stunned Radin who looked in askance at Harry who lifted his hands in surrender. He learned a long time ago not to get between his son and what he wanted. It took a further five years to talk the young metamorph out of it, but even then it was very clear that his feelings never really died down for the Dwarf King who was rapidly approaching the end of his life.

He was there with the rest of the Kingdom to mourn the passing of his dear friend, and hold his son as he cried himself hoarse as Radin's tomb was sealed in the depths of the Royal catacombs. He watched as his son became like a ghost in the following year as he mourned, and could do nothing but curse both his friend and his son for being as bad as each other.

Gandin's grandson through his daughter, Bombri, would inherit the Throne and while he and Harry got along well, no one could really replace Radin. Not even his brother.

Eventually, Harry went travelling, and dragged his son along with him. They went across the planet, exploring this and that. And eventually Teddy regained his spark and his love of life, he never stopped missing Radin, and had Harry been the romantic sort, he could have fancied Radin as Teddy's One, as the Dwarvish custom went. But while he made friends where-ever they walked, no one really caught his eye.

He caught someone else's though, most definitely. And she didn't let him escape.

Harry watched with something approaching terror and hilarity as Bill and Fleur's eldest daughter, Victoire, forced herself into their lives, and then into Teddy's heart, digging herself under his skin like a burr and refusing to let him pull her out no matter how short and irritable he got with her.

Harry wasn't surprised when they married. Or when Teddy came to him one morning hyperventilating about Victoire being pregnant. Or when he appeared begging Harry's help on how to deal with a small child.

He himself never did marry. No one really lit a fire in him but that was fine. He didn't need to. He had a good life, he laughed, loved, lived, cried, raged, mourned, and held the multitude of grand children, nieces and nephews, and godchildren he was blessed with, every single one of them. He saw education reforms, revolutions, witnessed the magical and the muggle worlds combine, he saw and served in wars, wrote books on whatever took his fancy, learned martial arts for the hell of it, had flings here and there with both men and women, with Vampires, Werewolves, Veela, Merfolk, he wasn't exactly discriminatory over _what_ they were, merely who they were. He lived a good life, a long life, and if he retired into hermitage, well no one could say they didn't see it coming. Least of all his friends and family.

He was ninety five when some young pup, a Dark Magic Supremacist brat fed on the legends and ideology of the Death Eaters and the Neo-Nazis, thought to try his luck at killing _The_ Harry Potter.

He didn't really stand a chance. Harry hadn't exactly gotten rusty over the years, not with the kind of 'adventures' he _constantly_ got himself into.

The bomb the lad had strapped to his chest, just in case he lost, proved to be more effective anyway.

_**000**_

And that was when Harry woke up stark bollock naked in a field with a beard down to his asshole.

"Where the fuck am I? GEORGE!"

_**000**_

**Of course he's going to blame George. Who else would do it? No one has the balls.**


	2. None

**Category:**** Crossover, pre!Hobbit/post!Harry Potter  
><strong>**Subcategory:**** Oneshot/Drabble series**

**Prompt:**** None****  
><span>Summary:<span>**** Harry sits down to figure out what the fuck just happened.****  
><span>Warnings:<span>**** Things and stuff.**

_I don't own the Hobbit, nor do I own Harry Potter. I'm just playing in the sandbox and making a big old mess._

_**000**_

It was a beautiful place to be sure.

It was also _**FUCK ASS COLD**_.

Harry cursed violently as he staggered to his feet, vertigo making the world spin around him so hard that he fell over again, and just spent a good twenty minutes staring up at the sky. Distantly imagining the number of worms, and ants that were currently working into his hair. The sensation of something tickling the edge of his ear threateningly finally had him launching himself upright with a slap to the side of his head, hard enough to knock himself over again.

What. The. Fuck.

Carefully, still startled and confused, he levered himself up into a sitting position, the side of his head throbbing. That... was a lot stronger than he expected. Still. Where the hell was he?

Vision no longer spinning, he look a long, careful look around himself. Distant snow-capped mountains, evergreen pines carpeted the steppes and reached downwards toward him, still distant, the ground soft and thick with moss and grass. It was quite comfortable actually. It felt like he was somewhere in the Netherlands, or Scotland.

The only problem being that he had been in China when he dropped that bomb toting little brat on his ass.

Speaking of...

Shouldn't he be a little... _dead_... right now?

Or at _LEAST_ charred, and exploded.

He felt fine. And checking himself over – okay, that was...

"Oookay. Apparently I got exploded so hard it blew the age off me, that or I have some kind of brain trauma, oooor..." he trailed off as he pinched his forearm, staring in abject confusion at the smooth pale skin, somewhat hairier than he recalled, and significantly more muscular too. Without the numerous scars he attained in his long, interesting, life either.

He then looked down and gagged in shock.

"D-Dwarf? Am I possessing a Dwarf?!" he squawked, grabbing at the luxuriously long beard and practically yanking it out of the way so he could get a better look at the unfamiliar body. Radin would have his head on a pike if he possessed a Dwarrow! Never mind _Radin_! Suri, his _niece_, would do _FAR_ worse things to him if she ever found out!

By Dwarf Standard, damn, this was one _VERY_ good-looking young lad. A little on the thin side, okay, considerably on the thin side when he thought back on Radin himself, and his family, but that was something easily resolved with a few good meals. And Dams were nothing if not eager to mother whatever wandered into their path, this lad probably not only got the side eye from both Dwarrow and Dam, but he also most likely got a lot of already bonded individuals trying to ply him with food. Hell, he wasn't even a Dwarf and he wanted to feed him up.

Small feet with a fine dusting of long hairs on his toes, strong ankles and powerful looking calves, thick muscular thighs, lean narrow hips, a tightly tucked stomach with a trail of wiry black hair extending from his groin up through his belly button to decorate his chest. Dwarves were naturally barrel chested compared to other folk, but as said, this lad was on the thin side, not quite as broad, or as thick around the chest as he perhaps could, or should, have been. Nice shoulders, and muscular arms, he had a beautifully long black beard, reaching down well past his hips, almost the same length as his actual hair which was just as thick and plentiful, and black as his beard. An attractive lad by what he knew of Dwarvish aesthetics – he hadn't seen the boy's face so he couldn't say much on that, he may have been like that singer back in the 2010's, nice body, but dog ugly in the face.

But either way, it definitely wasn't his body. He had never been able to put weight on, no matter how much he ate. He remained thin and wiry his whole life, unlike Teddy who even when he wasn't using his Metamorph talents to look like his Dwarvish friends looked rather a lot like one despite being 6'2" high with a significantly shorter beard.

Much like her mother, Victoire liked a little bit of rough.

He shook the thought off and settled into a crosslegged position.

If he was possessing some poor Dwarvish lad, then he needed to find the boy and bring him out to the forefront of his mind, and then find out what the hell he was doing in the middle of nowhere completely naked.

_**000**_

**Part two, finished. **

**These drabbles are going to **_**mostly**_** be in order. Some won't be. But I'll try to be clear on when they are even if they aren't done in order.**

**As of right now, it is 50 years before the events of the Hobbit. Harry is 95 years old. **


	3. Walking

**Category:**** Crossover, pre!Hobbit/post!Harry Potter  
><strong>**Subcategory:**** Oneshot/Drabble series**

**Prompt:**** Walking****  
><span>Summary:<span>**** With nothing else for it, Harry starts walking. He'll get somewhere. Eventually.****  
><span>Warnings:<span>**** Non-graphic bird murder and consumption. **

_I don't own the Hobbit, nor do I own Harry Potter. I'm just playing in the sandbox and making a big old mess._

_**000**_

He wasn't possessing a Dwarf.

He wasn't possessing anyone.

He wasn't possessing this body.

All the mental signs, all the mental connections, matched up to his own. Even when he pushed hard enough to form a metaphysical space – something that Snape told him was impossible, and that sarcastic Italian woman smacked him upside the head for believing – in his mind, it was his space. No discrepancy. In memory or... or in physicality.

This was his body.

And he was a Dwarf.

He didn't know how long he sat in the grass staring up at the sky just... trying to get that to sink in.

He'd done some weirdass shit, _seen_ some weirdass shit, been turned into some even weirderass shit.

Becoming one of Radin's people was... new.

And somehow, harder to wrap his head around than temporarily being stripped of his magic like he had that one year when he was sixty three. That had been weird, but, ultimately, just another day in the fucked up life of Harry Potter. Even spending a month living as a stag thanks to George's idea of a joke had been easier to swallow than... well this.

"Huh... well, there's nothing else for it, is there?" he mused out loud as his eyes tracked a bird, some kind of wood pigeon, ungracefully flutter overhead. He would have to get up and start walking somewhen.

Why not now? He asked himself as he rolled over and climbed to his feet, shaking his head and brushing himself free of grass and moss as best he could.

When he got to the nearest settlement, he could always hitch a lift to a city, and then contact Hermione. She had managed to bully enough Ministry Officials to get a telephone installed in her office so she could field calls from various muggles cleared to access her line. Him receiving the number was just par the course, he was the one who would use it the most they all reasoned. They weren't wrong.

She would be able to figure out what kind of strange Transfiguration had happened to him during that explosion-portkey- whatever it had been. Because it somehow flung him across the planet _and_ changed his entire species. Just what the fuck had that brat packed in there? Because if he hadn't managed to access his mindscape, he would have thought it filled with dried Gillyweed and he was currently high of his goddamn tits hallucinating. He spent several hours thinking he actually had tits the last time he accidentally got a noseful of the stuff, and the time before that thought himself a centaur when he purposefully took it. That had been hilarious. He spent the entire time speaking in riddles and _somehow_, he had no fucking clue how, managed to have a conversation with Bain that didn't get him shot with so many arrows he could have been an extra in the Princess Bride.

And so he walked. He would reach some form of civilisation sooner or later.

He picked a few plants and herbs he knew of, even managed to dig a few truffles out here and there, chowed down lazily as he meandered towards what he vaguely identified as east (it wasn't). He managed to find some really big leaves which worked well enough as a kind of itchy loincloth with some careful knotting and long braided grass stems.

And he kept walking.

Only stopping to gather firewood and clear some space for camp when he noticed the sun beginning to dip dangerously towards the crest of the mountain. So he set camp, built a fire out of sticks and stones, and grumbled about treeroots in his back when in reality he was still sleeping on mossy carpets and it was definitely more comfortable than his bed had been when he was a teenager at his Aunt and Uncle's.

He slept.

Waking to the dawn chorus of cheerful birds, and wondered if he threw the nearest stone hard enough he could kill one.

Turns out he could.

Not much point as it was very small under the feathers. Still. Something was better than nothing he decided as he roused the embers of his campfire back to life and used a few sticks to make a crude spitroast for his alarmclock.

An hour later he was leaving the campsite, wholly unsatisfied with his breakfast, and this time going in what he hoped was the same direction as he started out in (it wasn't).

And so his days continued.

He counted eighteen days before annoyance finally had him throwing his arms up in defeat.

Not a single sign of civilisation.

Not a road, dirt track, nor even a sign post, grave, abandoned car, bike, farm house, weird ass rock with carvings (you'd be surprised how many of them you'd find in a forest). Nothing. Not even anything that could be identified as once maintained farmland allowed to go wild.

Not a sausage.

So he gave up. Because he was practical like that, and he was getting a little fed up of sleeping on tree roots.

He walked a little more, looking for the perfect place. If he was going to return to his hermitage then he was going to do it right and build his own damn house where he fucking chose to build it. And if anyone had a problem with that, they could give him a pair of trousers and point him to the nearest city, damnit.

_**000**_

**Not quite the swear-a-thon people expected, but being in his ninties, Harry really has been through too much to get riled up like that these days. Or at least, right now. Give it a while before his brain really connects to his body. XDDD He's still a young Dwarf, going by the age conversions that I worked out... he's only in his early twenties as a Dwarf. Anywhere between 18-23. **


	4. Places

**Category:**** Crossover, pre!Hobbit/post!Harry Potter  
><strong>**Subcategory:**** Oneshot/Drabble series**

**Prompt:**** Places****  
><span>Summary:<span>**** And thus the building begins****  
><span>Warnings:<span>**** Waffling descriptions of construction.**

_I don't own the Hobbit, nor do I own Harry Potter. I'm just playing in the sandbox and making a big old mess._

_**000**_

He found it. A somewhat large clearing and a river running along a gravel embankment.

Yup. He liked it. This was his place now.

Fuck anyone who said otherwise.

He had never built his own house before. The first time he went hermit, he bought a shrunken cottage and just resized it (magic made everything so much easier), the second time he lived in a cave and used Transfiguration to alter it to his tastes. He only had the most basic idea of what to do and that was purely common-sense talking – a superpower he tried to regain and then maintain once he left Hogwarts, because there was something about that place that slayed things like logic and common-sense. He liked to think it was another one of Voldemort's little curses.

Using a nice flat rock with a sharp edge, Harry marked out the space he would need.

Large enough to have a bed, some storage space, kitchen... He didn't know a damn thing about plumbing so perhaps an outside toilet would be a good idea. Oh and a bath thing, that shouldn't be overly difficult to do. He already had fresh water from the river – speaking of, he made a mental note to keep the toilet far away from it. He remembered enough of his History regarding the River Thames to know that human waste leeching into water sources was what caused horrid things like cholera to spawn. He wasn't too keen on getting anyone living down river sick. Ugh, if only he had some metal, or rather, someone to shape the metal for him. He was a pretty fair mechanic and had studied a surprising amount of engineering – hell, he had been wiring the Dursleys house and appliances since he was knee high because there was no chance they were letting the gas-man or the electrician into the house to check the metre and find out they were keeping a four year old in a cupboard. Vernon had thrown books at his head and given him a week to fix whatever needed to be fixed and that had been that. So yeah. Hand him metal pipes, screws, bolts, sheet metal, whatever, he could make what he needed easy enough. Put it together and have it work like a dream. Make it from wood and stone? Shape it himself? Nah mate.

Once he had a space marked out, he began the long, tiring process of tearing up the grass and moss, hauling rocks out of the way, uprooting tree stumps and small bushes, assorted shrubberies and tossing them aside in a pile, making sure to keep the tree stumps because he could render those down for tar. Tiring, sweaty work. And his loincloth was itching something fierce.

Clearing the space of what was to be his new home took the majority of the day, and when the sun began to set, he used some of the wood and made himself a neat little campfire just outside of it where he slept the night away, shivering slightly under the chilly wind. The next morning he took a long stick, and a sharp ended piece of flint he found on the gravel bed and made himself a fishing javelin.

He wasn't a good fisher, but apparently he was fast enough to get at least a pair of fish onto the ground. They looked much bigger in the water.

Anyone who says wilderness survival when you literally have nothing is easy needs to be taken out back and shot. It was not.

He ate pretty well, and decided to add another project to his list for later – a smoking hut.

But for now, he concentrated on his house.

He dug deep trenches for the walls and support beams, making sure the four corners were deeper than the others as they would be the main anchors of the house, and then the roof.

Finding trees good enough to be those supports was harder than he thought it would be – getting them _back_ to the clearing was harder. It was backbreaking and exhausting, and difficult because he was doing it without tools or equipment. No rope, no axes. He had to make it all out of stone. He went to bed tired, achy, and exhausted, sleeping deeply and without dreams, and woke up the next morning ravenously hungry, sore, and ready to go again.

Thank all the Gods above and Below for Dwarvish endurance.

By the end of the twelfth day, he had four posts anchored deeply at the four corners of his home, each of them with two and a half inch deep grooves running vertically up their lengths facing each other. Several smaller trees, stripped of branches, stacked carefully to one side, their ends tapered and shaped carefully to fit those grooves.

Harry meanwhile had stumbled on a spot of fantastic luck.

A small herd of deer had wondered into his clearing one morning and he had been able to fell one, a young buck. His pelt was currently being treated, his meat getting very carefully cooked and smoked in a hastily thrown together stone and wood thatch oven, and Harry was in the process of carving buttons and toggles out of the antlers. The pelt wasn't enough to make himself some proper trousers, but it would be good enough for stopping his junk waving about in the wind with only itchy leaves to cover him.

When the rain came, Harry ended up having to crawl into his hastily constructed smoking oven in order to stay out of it. No work occurred that day as the river threatened to swell past the gravel banks and a harsh wind drove hail stones harshly across his clearing to hammer against the beginnings of his house, stood desolately in the dim lighting.

Harry really hoped the wood didn't get damaged from all the water. He would need to render down those tree-stumps soon, get some tar on the exposed pine.

The next morning, after checking to make sure everything was okay, he took a fairly large stone, more of a boulder really, from the river, and sat with it in his lap the whole day, chipping a bowl into it. He hadn't anticipated his need for some manner of water-tight container that wouldn't catch on fire so soon. Well, actually he _had_, he just assumed he would be able to find a way around it – like he had for the bathtub issue (hot rocks for the win).

The next few days he carefully carved and shaped the stone bowl, now bucket, with more focus and skill than he thought himself capable of. He knew what he was like, he did _not_ embody many Hufflepuff traits, no matter how much he may have tried to, the ability to stick at something mind-numbing but essential had never been his. He would always get distracted, do something else, and only come back when reminded of it. Fleur once said he had a butterfly mind. George teased him remorselessly for it. And yes, he did end up with butterfly wings after trying one of his new candies. They were flight capable too which was _AWESOME_. Harry forgave him immediately because of that.

When the bowl was done, he stacked several stones above a fire, and dropped one of the many tree-stumps inside with a little water and boiled it down to tar. It took some time so inbetween cutting down more trees and carefully tapered to size Harry would check to see how it was going, stirring the steadily thickening mixture whenever he lifted the heavy flat stone he was using as a lid. But, whoa, goddamn. That was both some pungent stuff, and some toxic stuff. He felt light headed whenever he lifted the lid to check on it.

He left it to render down overnight, making sure the fire remained steady as he did so.

It was... lonely work.

He sang to himself as he used the stone tools he fashioned from the river rocks to chip away at the wood, and constantly upheld a stream of sarcastic commentary to himself. It probably wasn't healthy but that was the way of it, he would eventually calm down and stop finding the silence so unnerving. It was the same way the first time he hermited himself away from the world. He had to fill the silence somehow, had to remind himself of things by talking to himself about it all. Eventually he quieted down, and grew comfortable with the silence, appreciated it even.

The sudden explosion of noise and chaos that attacked his senses when he returned to the Burrow for one Christmas nearly had him fleeing back home immediately. It probably would have if Molly, bless her soul, hadn't known exactly what would happen and quickly sequestered him away in the living room with some tea out of the general chaos of the house and just... let him adjust. Under her iron gaze no one dared disturb him until, tentatively, he peered out of the living room himself. And even then, only Ron and Hermione approached him first, followed by the brothers he knew, then their other halves, and then the children. Molly had apparently been very friendly with a granduncle who went Hermit and thus knew how to 'reintroduce them' so to speak.

By the time a month had come and gone, not that he could really tell the time here, Harry had fallen past the noisy stage and grown quiet, and content with the sounds of the wilderness around him, the rasp of stone on wood as he worked, the distant trickle of the river as it flowed past him. It was soothing.

His house took shape as well.

Within three months, it was done, or rather, the walls were, a pair of windows (without glass or shutters) at the front and a door were roughly cut into the wood, and Harry was hauling ceiling beams into place wearing leather trousers, boots, and a vest. His chin was shaved bear, his long hair knotted up (it kept his neck warm and for that he let it stick around. The beard just kept catching fire and getting in the way of his hands while he worked) out of the way, his hands rough and calloused from hard work.

He gathered rocks from up and down the river to pile up into a crude chimney for his fireplace/stone oven, and went even further afield to find enough grasses to make his thatched roof. Thankfully it had just turned into summer and he didn't have to worry about rain save for the occasional shower and summer storm.

He noted, idly, as he laid down the last of the thatching and weighted it in place with heavy strips of wood that he carefully latticed across the roof over the top of the thatching, that it was mid-summer, and thus his birthday.

Ninety six.

That had to be worth a little celebration, he decided, on top of finishing up the outside of his house (he still needed window shutters and a door, they would have to wait though, hinges were fiddly).

That evening, he slept on his sewn together fur blanket inside his house with the fire crackling merrily, and sipped at really badly made nettle tea.

_**000**_

**Harry's house is done. **

**I probably had a little too much fun trying to figure out how to get him to do all this stuff without any tools, any metal, or any of the usual stuff. Even Wattle and Daub – which is a very old fashioned plaster made of lime and plant fibre, even mud or dung in some cases. So yeah. **

**Oh yeah, if you guys have any PARTICULAR scenes you'd like to see happen in the future, don't be afraid to tell me. I'll see if I can work them in, if I can't, sorry, if I can, surprise, you'll find out when I post it XDDDDD**


	5. Year

**Category:**** Crossover, pre!Hobbit/post!Harry Potter  
><strong>**Subcategory:**** Oneshot/Drabble series**

**Prompt:**** Year****  
><span>Summary:<span>**** It's been a year. What do?****  
><span>Warnings:<span>**** Orcs and Goblins I suppose? Violent combat and death.**

_I don't own the Hobbit, nor do I own Harry Potter. I'm just playing in the sandbox and making a big old mess._

_**000**_

It had been a year since he first arrived (he guessed) and by now, his house was a handsome little cottage if he did say so himself.

Horizontal log walls, thick grass thatching weighed down with carefully shaped wooden lattice work that stretched across the entire roof. Stuffed in with the grass was a great deal of lavender sprigs, as much as he could harvest without causing damage to the plants he found, hopefully that would keep the bugs out of his roof, he didn't have enough in the way of leathers to make a full-poster bed with a canopy yet.

His chimney was carefully stacked rocks and now with a wattle and daub mortar to prevent smoke from filtering through the gaps. He'd 'plastered' his walls on the inside of his cottage with said wattle and daub, made almost exclusively from ground stone and hemp fibres. He had gotten lucky while hunting for materials and stumbled on quite the stretch of the plant, at first he thought it was marijuana, but then recalled that hemp was the male plant, marijuana was the female. He then also recalled that hemp, before the British Muggle Government outlawed it, was one of _the_ biggest exports in their country, it had been used for thousands of years for a ridiculous number of things, anything from clothing, to food, medicine, animal feed, construction, and lamp-oil if handled right. Needless to say, he had made himself a field of the male plant in order to fulfil a great deal of needs he had yet to find a way to resolve.

He made himself a bed, stitching a number of skins together with care and stuffing them with grass and lavender to act as a mattress, he did the same for a pillow only he used the feathers from the pigeons he smacked with rocks out of the sky – he even got a goose once which had been tasty, until he had to eat the cold left overs. Cold goose tastes disgusting.

He had a table made of wood-slabs hammered together using pegs as nails to edge them together. It was a little uneven, but a small wedge of wood under one of the legs settled that, he knew he would eventually lose patience with it and level it out, but for now he could deal with it. He made several shelving units and a chair. His stone oven looked more like a kiln, or a pizza oven despite not being as deep, it was more than enough to keep his little cottage warm. Hanging from the ceiling beams he had clumps of drying herbs, and various tools kept out of the way so he wasn't slipping on them.

Outside his house, he had worked the land into something quite attractive. At the front of his house was a neat little vegetable patch on the right hand side, and a herb-garden on the left, sadly, for him, there were more herbs than vegetables. He had managed to unearth some potatoes further down the river and promptly transported them back to his garden, but he only had the most basic of ideas on how to cultivate them. Herbs he was much more familiar with. This was neatly fenced in with a stone path leading out into a cleared area. To one side, far away from the river, was his privy, the small wooden hut had a hatch at the back leading into a compost heap where his waste and whatever else he had could ferment itself into something useful for his hemp field. There was a stone and log wall that stretched along the river's edge that hopefully would prevent him from getting flooded if the river ever burst its banks. He had a small firewood shack stacked at the side-wall of his house, and a little further off was both his tanning shack, where he made furs and leathers out of his kills – it stank to high hell, hence why it was set far away from the house. Beside it was the smoking hut, with no windows, and a pretty thickly thatched ceiling instead of simply wooden slabs covered in tar.

Next to the river was his bath-tub, a huge wooden barrel that he filled with water and then dropped heated rocks into to warm up for bathing in. Sitting down in it, it could quite comfortably have the water up to his shoulders, the bottom was carefully shaped so that when he dropped the rocks in, he could insert a wooden grate above them, that way when he climbed in, he wasn't burning his feet on rocks straight out from his fireplace/kiln.

He was doing well.

He spent his afternoons when he wasn't gathering food or maintaining his vegetables, and herbs, playing with rocks and wood, making things. Or trying to. His current project was using the bone of his kills to see if he couldn't make some form of porcelain/china. So far all of his creations were just too delicate, they crumbled almost immediately. Which was a pain in the ass, he needed something... no gooey, but kind of stickyish to stop it from crumbling to dust when being fired.

It was literally the winter after his ninety-seventh birthday, so basically a year and a bit after his arrival, that he encountered his first _intelligent_ beings.

Though how intelligent they were when he caught them trying to raid his smoking shack in the middle of the night remained to be seen.

They weren't the most attractive of beings. In fact, if Harry were being honest, they looked a lot like the love children of a Goblin, Dementor, and a Gargoyle. And they made every hair on the back of his neck and his forearms stand straight. They reeked of old blood and rotting things. Dressed in ragged leathers, some having armoured plate and chainmail, all of them possessing weapons, they woke him up with their grunting and their shuffling and low snarled words.

Given how long Harry had been living here alone, any noise that wasn't part of his natural night-time serenade, and not made by himself, had him immediately awake and wary.

Hence why he was carrying his stone hammer when he stepped out of his house to go and confront his strange company.

"What the hell are you lot doing with my shack?" he demanded dryly, hammer set over one shoulder as he looked them over. About five of them in all, two were a good foot or so taller than himself, the others about his height, with only one lower at his shoulder, and possessing very stubby bowed legs.

They gargled and snarled something at him before one was suddenly yanking a knife from his belt and running for him.

The crunch that filled the air when Harry unslung the hammer from his shoulder and smacked him aside with a golf-swing was almost sickening.

Harry winced, okay, he really hoped he wasn't going to get a murder charge for that. He hadn't meant to hit it that hard. True he _COULD_ probably talk his way out of it but... yikes. Guilt nagged at him for all of the time it took for him to turn, and swing his hammer up with one hand to knock aside a significantly larger sword away from burying itself in his neck.

He arched an eyebrow at the creature that bared its teeth at him, Harry leaned back at the putrid breath that wafted over his face. Okay, so _that_ was what that stench of decay was from. Weaponised bad breath. At least he wasn't a nundu.

"Yeah buddy, gunna have to warn you. Former soldier here, SAS attachment Dark Lord Division. I am cleared to use lethal force. Continue this engagement and I will respond with force. You will not receive another warning," he told the creature as clearly and loudly as possible.

And stepped back to avoid the punch directed at the side of his head.

Oh well, he _had_ warned him. Much like the SAS and the Royal Marines, now that he had given the warning, if he accidentally maimed and or killed this being, there wasn't a single court on earth that would charge him for assault. Manslaughter perhaps, but with a severely reduced sentence.

"Your funeral," he stated idly and then snapped a kick up directly into the being's jaw, breaking it, and possibly his nose, with a horrifyingly tooth cracking crunch.

He spun in place, arm lashing up to shove aside the wrist of the short one rushing up behind him, pushing the blade across his body even as Harry stepped in close, turning and _ramming_ his elbow into the creature's face with an equally nauseating crunch as he felt something _definitely_ give under his blow. He gripped the creature's wrist and whirled him around – throwing him into the fourth who had yet to engage but had now started moving forward, reaching for his weapon.

The second big one was suddenly coming forward and Harry grinned, grabbing the handle of his discarded hammer and swinging it upward.

The big one jumped back and Harry grinned lunging forward, clearly it hadn't expected that as since he first greeted them, he hadn't moved a single step. The startled expression on its face was particularly interesting given that horrible looking overbite it had going on there, Harry decided as he rammed the handle of his hammer into its exposed stomach before swinging his hammer up and crashing it down over his back. Dropping him like a sack of shit.

The fourth one, after shoving his companion off of him, jumped for Harry but he was much faster with the stone hammer.

Grabbing the handle in both hands, he turned his body and _heaved_.

Almost like an uppercut, but with a massive rock on a stick, he slammed it into the creature during its midair jump – and sent it a good twenty feet in the opposite direction with a nasty sounding crack.

The two that he had smacked around earlier (the first of which, the littlest, was struggling to its feet with... blue black blood dribbling down its chin. Huh) bore down on him. The bigger one looking a little cross eyed as he aimed a little too far to Harry's left with that over-sized broadsword, the smaller using a knife of some kind. Neither of them looked clean or well cared for.

The big one Harry side-stepped and punched in the back of the head hard enough to knock flat, and hopefully out.

The little one stopped, took one look around, and then hightailed it out of there.

"Huh. What do you know, not so stupid anyway," he mused and then realised that the other smaller one was staggering off into the darkness as well, in the opposite direction.

Humming, Harry looked down at the three bodies around him.

Two were breathing, if a little... broken. The one that he'd slammed with his stone hammer while in midair – yeah. That was a snapped neck. Harry grimaced anxiously.

Well, nothing else for it.

They tried to rob him, turn about was fair play.

He stripped them of their weapons and what seemed useful, like their metal armour bits – maybe he could find some way of reshaping it into a few tools?

Metal bits thrown onto his porch, Harry grabbed the two big guys by the ankles and dragged them away from his house. Being so familiar with this place, he slogged his way to the hill and the small cliff and casually tossed them down it. The incline wasn't steep, it didn't even deserve the name cliff when it was about as steep as a flight of stairs at Hogwarts. He left them there and went back home. If they came back, well, they would know to leave again or he would take his hammer back to them.

Looking at the metal stuff he acquired in the light of his fireplace, he concluded that his woodworking just got a lot easier. Even if they did need cleaning and sharpening something awful.

_**000**_

**Doorf. Harry done doorf'd a pair of Orcs and a trio of Goblins. **

**Next chapter should introduce some ACTUAL characters, who have dialogue and everything.**


	6. Found

**Category:**** Crossover, pre!Hobbit/post!Harry Potter  
><strong>**Subcategory:**** Oneshot/Drabble series**

**Prompt:**** Found****  
><span>Summary:<span>**** Harry finds some folk in need of assistance****  
><span>Warnings:<span>**** Orcs and Goblins I suppose? Violent combat and death, partial baby eating.**

_I don't own the Hobbit, nor do I own Harry Potter. I'm just playing in the sandbox and making a big old mess._

_**000**_

When he went to check on the two big guys he tossed aside later that morning, one was gone, but his friend looked...

Those were teeth marks, and they weren't from any animal local to the area. A leg had been ripped away, and taken off somewhere as well.

Okay, these things were apparently cannibals. Or at least opportunistic flesh eaters like the Gringotts Goblins.

Shrugging a shoulder, Harry left the corpse where it was. It was later joined by the little one Harry kind of broke during the fight and that was that. He left them to quietly rot away and went back home to see if he couldn't figure out how to make some fabric out of those hemp fibres he managed to harvest, he would love some linens, hell, if he couldn't manage it, he wouldn't turn his nose up at string or rope either. Callous perhaps, given how he had killed them, and had they been anything else he probably would have been _very_ upset about his accidental lethality. Soldier of three wars not including Voldemort he may have been, but he had never enjoyed killing or the taking of life, he had never quite figured out how to numb himself to it either. However... he wasn't one to ignore his instincts and right now, they were telling him that he had probably done the world a service by snapping that neck. So he tried not to dwell on the corpses as he continued to work.

He would encounter one of his run-aways a few days later with a somewhat larger group but really, they shouldn't have attacked him in his own territory at _night_. That was just _asking_ for a spanking. And this time, he didn't show much of any mercy after they came with swords drawn. Several more corpses joined the ones at the bottom of the little cliff and Harry ended up with some really shitty metal blades that could barely hold an edge no matter how carefully he handled them. Eventually the mutant goblin swords were regulated to woodchoppers and other assorted tools around the house, they were more useful that way.

It was midwinter when he met some __actual __people, people who didn't run directly at him with swords drawn while stinking of rotting things – which now he kind of knew to be the smell of people and dead flesh from their unbrushed teeth (he found a gnawed on hand in one of those thing's backpacks). Gross.

The sounds of shouting, and a shriek splitting the air woke him.

That was the scream of a woman.

He rolled out of bed and ran to the door, snatching up his stone hammer as he passed, not even bothering with boots as he burst outside, spotting distant lights in the trees and sprinted towards them. It looked to be a group of travellers, women and children, a few men, carts and wagons of personal belongings, not exactly product, they were _families_.

The first Goblin met the business end of his hammer and bounced off the near-by tree, crumpling to the ground motionless.

The second he physically wrenched off a young woman (he was guessing, he/she/it wore a dress) by the leg, and flung into one of his larger cohorts before he had to dodge out of the way of a sword from a third. That one he grabbed by the head and twisted, snapping his neck neatly and letting him drop.

Now that he was closer, and seeing them within the light of the torches from the carts, he could tell it was a group of Dwarves. Dwarrows, Dams, and younglings. They were all dressed in ragged furs and wools and leathers, all looking as if they had seen better days and all of them looking rather thin and gaunt. Homeless, otherwise there was no chance in hell that the ladies and especially the little ones would be outside. And now they were under attack by large numbers of those mutant goblin bastards, too large he realised as the dam he just saved was trying to get to her feet on a broken leg, screaming as she struggled to follow one of the squat ones now retreating, carrying a small squirming bundle, a child. None of her kin could spare her a moment though, they were in a literal fight for their lives.

The bundle let out a squeal when the Goblin bit down on it and the dam roared in fury, this time surging to her feet completely heedless to her former struggle as she bulldozed toward the creature that harmed her child. Harry would have winced in sympathy but any being that hurt a Dwarrowling in front of its mother was too fucking stupid to exist.

Scooping up a stone from the ground, he hefted it and took aim.

The goblin dropped with a crunch before it could completely turn and flee from the enraged mother, the bundle in its arms wailing desperately as the thing fell on top of it before it was roughly wrenched off so the woman could gather up her precious child. Harry kept an eye on the pair as the rest of her kin managed to get the upper-hand and see the mutant goblin folk off, sprinting with shrieks into the forest.

Then they all rounded on him.

He lowered the hammer and lifted a hand, grinning a little awkwardly, "Hi. Is everyone okay?" he asked.

One of the larger Dwarrows with an impressively vivid red bushy beard pointed an axe at his neck and snarled something. Oh dear.

"Sorry, I don't understand. But lower the axe would you?" he asked as amiably as he could while sounding as if he were gargling boulders, he pressed a finger onto the axe head and redirected it away from his neck, swallowing against the rough pain in the back of this throat. It had been a long time since he had spoken to anyone. A chilly wind swept over them causing Harry to look skyward in annoyance, snow, or rain, either way... "Come on, my home is this way," he declared hefting the stone hammer onto his shoulder and gesturing at them to follow him with a smile, hoping that even if they didn't understand his words they would at least understand that he meant no harm.

The dam he saved spoke up and a lot of the Dwarves shifted uncertainly, at least until she tried to struggle to her feet.

"Hey, you shouldn't be – your leg is broken," Harry scolded as he quickly moved to her side, catching her shoulder and pushing her back down. "You, red, come here and help me with her, would you? She shouldn't be walking on that leg," he said gesturing at him to come over. There was some confusion but the red head came over warily, and, with a lot of miming, gesturing, and the dam making what was possibly some very educated guesses, eventually they got the idea that he was offering to carry the injured dam on his back. There was some bristling but for the most part no one was really in a state to carry her _and_ their belongings at the same time, so in short order Harry was stalking back to his cottage, leading them all through the darkness with both Dam and Dwarrowling on his back.

Fingers crossed he wasn't about to make a mistake inviting these people into his house.

_**000**_

**I now the clever ones amongst you will have figured out that the Dam that Harry just saved was Dis, and the Dwarrowling is Kili. He's about 10 right now – which in Dwarvish terms is toddler/just out of toddlerhood. **


End file.
